How to Recruit, Educate, Motivate, Retain, and HireToday’s Teens and Young Adults.

About WAVES for Success

Thanks for visiting our website. Here at WAVES, we have the unique advantage of being both employers...and through WAVES for Success we're providing guidance to companies that together employ thousands of teens. That opportunity has allowed us a close up view of the "best of the best" practices.

Through that dual perspective we have created the WAVES 5 Principals of Teenage Workforce Success. This serves as the foundation of the message that we deliver.

Ken, founder and Keynote Speaker of WAVES for Success has committed his professional life to working within the recreational, leisure-time, and restaurant industries, focusing on strategic sales building programs, customer service initiatives, and the motivating and training of a large entry-level workforce. He has spent nearly 30 years, in the trenches, managing his family's food service business at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, and Fair & Festival business unit. Ken also consults with similar types of businesses, providing cost effective solutions to growing revenue and decreasing costs.

He lectures regularly on the subjects of Teenage Workforce and Supervisory Success, to any organization that employs and develops youth, and has created the WAVES for Success system for improving workplace performance. He has employed thousands of teens and young adults, and continues to focus on ways of understanding, in today's culture, what inspires them to participate, contribute and excel at work.

He has been very involved in amusement park and restaurant industry activities. Ken currently is the Chair of the Food & Beverage Committee for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA), and has presented regularly at their annual convention.

Ken is accompanied by a great staff, managed by Jeff Whiting. Similar to Ken, Jeff has also grown up within the recreational, leisure-time, and restaurant industries.

Jeff graduated from San Diego State University in 2005 with a Bachelors of Science degree in Hospitality and Tourism Management with an emphasis in Restaurant Operations.

Jeff brings to the team a vast variety of experience, ranging from employment at the Four Seasons Resort, to a management internship at Outback Steakhouse. Most recently Jeff managed a Quick Service Restaurant called Pat & Oscar's based in Southern California. Jeff was brought on as a manager but quickly got promoted to their Catering Sale Manager; overseeing 12 of their then 19 restaurants in San Diego and San Bernardino Counties. Jeff just recently returned to Santa Cruz, CA to assist Ken Whiting with WAVES for Success.

Ken and Jeff bring to the table a wealth of experience managing Generation Y and getting today's teens to engage at a level that any owner and manager would be pleased with. Together they personally have over 40 years of experience in managing a teenage intensive workforce in several different industries.

Rest assured that the information you will find here on this website is derived from countless hours in managing yesterdays and today's evolving workforce. Also, please visit our endorser page where you will find a plethora of names and business that endorse our work and support WAVES and the products and services that we provide. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.